“Registered letter, Miss,” said Sam, throwing it to her end of the counter, as he usually did with such a packet.
She was about to lay it aside for attention later when the address caught her eye. A cry escaped her.
Sam turned to see her, white as a ghost, tearing at the envelope.
“Oh, what can it be?” she whispered. Then, as if courage failed her, “Sam, come and take it. Tell me what it’s all about. I—I daren’t look. It may be nothing much, after all.”
Sam’s fingers were none too steady as he received the envelope. “Registered at Glasgow,” he muttered, and proceeded to extract the contents.
These were a fairly plump number of banknotes, and a half-sheet of paper bearing the words—
“From an old friend of your father.” . . . Sam read them aloud while she stood rigid with her face in her hands.
“Am I to count them?” he asked.
“Yes,” she murmured.
“Five-pun’ notes,” he said, and there followed a rustling pause. “Twenty o’ them—a hundred pound. . . . See!” he took one of her hands from her face, and pressed the bundle into it. “Feel them—they’re real, ye poor, pretty thing!”